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After Years of Service, Nintendo's NSider Forums Have Closed Indefinitely

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Shuko

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Many members of Nintendo's popular webforum (NSider) received an email yesterday informing them that the forum was taken down for an indefinite amount of time:

Hello,

As you have seen, the message boards at www.nintendo.com have been
closed indefinitely. At this time the future of the forums is uncertain
and there are no plans to retain ranks, post count, etc. The forums are
being made available in a Read Only format for one week so our fans can
preserve their favorite posts on their own computer. As was stated in
the message, you are encouraged to start new Nintendo forums
elsewhere.

We appreciate all the support from our fans over the years. Your
feedback about the forums will be forwarded to the appropriate department.

Nintendo of America Inc.
NOA Mac
Click to expand...

With a membership of well over 50,000 members, this move on Nintendo's part is a serious blow to many of its fans. I'll be the first to admit that although their forums weren't perfect (the rank/privilege system was lame, and the way they enforced rules was so strict you couldn't even say damn without the swear filter sending off a report), I'm going to miss them. :(

I apologize if this doesn't belong here. At Serebii, even in the Nintendo discussion forum, all talk of NSider has been locked, because apparently although the forum was a big part of Nintendo's fan community, it doesn't count as "Nintendo Discussion." If another mod would like to close this, I'll hold no grudge. :p But I thought it should be discussed, because it makes me wonder why Ninty would close down such an intimate link to their fanbase. Perhaps it has to do with all the rampant sharing of friend codes via PM... it was wholly against the rules to share "personal information" on the forums, and they specifically stated that friend codes were personal information, but people did it anyway via PM. Maybe they were unable to afford to keep it running. Who knows?

Were you an NSider? If so, what will you miss the most? For me, it'll be all the friends that I made there, that I now no longer have any way of contacting. :(
 
I wasn't, and what I'll miss the most is laughing at the stupidity of some of their rules :-D
 
Doctor Oak said:
Good riddance.
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Lol. I take it you were less than satisfied with your experience(s) there. xD

Most new members didn't make it past the 3-day trial period; they got tired of it and left. That was one of the downsides to it (one of the MANY downsides), but still, there were a lot of awesome people there. And the place was huge. When I say over 50k members, that's only because I really don't know how many there were. Serebii has 50k members, but NSider easily had that many ACTIVE members. There was few better places to go and talk with a large variety of Nintendo fans. :p And it was family friendly for the most part, so there were people of all ages there too. Lots of people my age, but also lots of kids, lol. Anyway, I am going to miss it, but not as much as my real life best friend. :p She practically lived there, lol.
 
Am I the only one seeing a big internal change from Nintendo? There's the prosecuting copyright violators in Korea, now NOA closing their forums...and I know I'm forgetting a few other things. It's like they're making a conscious, hard-nosed shift. I just wonder why. Why NOW. And should we be looking for something else on the horizon?
 
You should know that the copyright stuff in Korea is 100% to do with the fact that the Wii is launching there soon and they're trying to stem both the piracy that's pretty rampant there from getting worse with the Wii and to build up some momentum for the launch.

As for NSider getting closed down, maybe they were just sick of idiot children taking up their bandwidth? (Or more likely, they don't want all the new people they've got in their audience from the Wii and DS to visit nintendo.com and seeing a bunch of homeschooled 8 year olds spamming the place up). All those forums ever were was a distilled compilation of Nintendo fanboys from GameFags, with each board having the general average posting IQ of a small glass of water.

I guess the worst part of it is really that now Nintendo is basically just sending them out into the wilderness of the internet to annoy the fuck out of everyone else that were on other Nintendo boards specifically to avoid them on NSider...
 
Doctor Oak said:
You should know that the copyright stuff in Korea is 100% to do with the fact that the Wii is launching there soon and they're trying to stem both the piracy that's pretty rampant there from getting worse with the Wii and to build up some momentum for the launch.
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I always thought it was a sly move on Ninty's part to put old games on the Wii virtual console. It made ROMs and emulators all the more actionable, since Nintendo itself was now rereleasing the games. Lol. I'm surprised the PS3 hasn't been doing the same thing. xD
 
Nintendo had also just sold Nintendo Power to Future Publishing.

I think this is a reflection of Nintendo shifting their target demographic from what they call "core" gamers to the mass market casual gamer.
 
Swifty said:
Nintendo had also just sold Nintendo Power to Future Publishing.
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Now that's news to me.

I wonder, just what is Nintendo trying to do?

I knew that the Nsider Forums were integrated well with the Nintendo Power Magazine. In fact, within the last year or two, the magazine has tried to integrate a lot of the user community within the halls of the magazine from the opening comments [which used to be sent in mail] to user art and reviews. Now that you mention that Nintendo has sold off their Official Mag, news of the Forums shutting down isn't as surprising.

I was ... a member but only for a short time. I did get past the initial '3-day' waiting period [which was rather annoying] to gain access to the rest of the forums. In the early days, the forum wasn't so bad but eventually it became rampant with spammers merely because people were trying to bump up their post counts to gain access to the simplest of forum privileges like a signature or the ability to post pictures.

I think the system was created in the first place to give moderators easier control over the population but obviously made things worse with so many unnecessary threads made. While some members did show merit, they were few among a population of, dare I say, n00bs. It was wild and uncontrolled, much like a grade-school classroom with the teacher gone for a bit too long. But really, no forum is worth visiting without a worthwhile community. Sure Nintendo put a whole bunch of mechanisms in place to protect little Timmy, but I think some of these restrictions could have been handled more effectively and because they weren't I just couldn't stand to stay.

It's gone, but I must say, I don't share much sympathy. I think I'm with Doctor Oak on this one.
 
I found that out the morning after... I was going to check how the kiddies there were reacting to Brawl's newly-confirmed Wi-Fi capabilities. Needless to say, I didn't get very far, heh.

I was never fond of the forums... There was a bunch of thick-headed nimrods there whom were always starting up trouble. Spamming and flaming were two major things I saw. Those poor kids really needed to get a life... Well, this is one step closer for some of them.
If Nintendo DOES start anew, I really hope they're a little more active with the constant annoyance that is flamers and spammers. I know they're only human, but please... If you're going to maintain a forum, you'll have the burden of responibility so to make it a "kid-friendly" place. That's what killed it right there. Sure, they got rid of some people, or deleted some topics... but most of the members there just started up trouble that should have been dealt with so much sooner.

If the forums do come back up, I'll probably join just so I can have some Nsider benefits. Nothing more than that. Oh, and to check up on the Smash boards occasionally, heh.
 
Swifty said:
Nintendo had also just sold Nintendo Power to Future Publishing.

I think this is a reflection of Nintendo shifting their target demographic from what they call "core" gamers to the mass market casual gamer.
Click to expand...

Future, of course, also (writes and) publishes the official magazine in the UK (along with the top unofficial Nintendo mag).
 
hmmmmmmm. I'm a member, but the forums there, like said, are too strict and the ranking, i hate. YOU CAN'T HAVE A SIGNATURE FOR, LIKE EVER!! but there were some funny Pokemon comic makers there, and one of my friends has an art gallery on there too. those are the only things i'll miss, but i never went on there too often anyway, hmm. why was it closed down?
 
Doctor Oak said:
I guess the worst part of it is really that now Nintendo is basically just sending them out into the wilderness of the internet to annoy the fuck out of everyone else that were on other Nintendo boards specifically to avoid them on NSider...
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was thinking. In the short five minutes I spent lurking there, I got annoyed so much I never wanted to go back.
 
Shuko said:
I'm surprised the PS3 hasn't been doing the same thing. xD
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But it has! The PlayStation store has old PS1 and PS2 games for download, just like the Wii Virtual Console!

And...although I wasn't a member and I didn't like lurking either, I feel sorry for its members...

And - not everyone who goes there is an idiot! I will tell you I have a really good friend who went there!
 
I think I may have only posted 3 times there or so. It wasn't a real appealing forum, and it felt rather messy. I don't really care that it is gone. I do think it is because Nintendo is reworking NoA so much. With the headquarters being split into 3 parts and the magazine thing, I kind of expected this...

I think People on IGN were speculating that Nintendo could be moving this sort of content to the Wii, as a channel or something, but I don't really know. Nintendo can go either way, and I see this as a simple budget cut of something unnecessary.
 
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